I don't care if 95% of the iMac market doesn't need better specs than that. It's downright shameful for Apple to be selling something with that hardware for that price.

Oh, sure. I wasn't arguing about the lack of need--simply pointing out that most Mac users have always had crappy integrated graphics, and yet that hasn't stopped Feral and Aspyr from existing. Look at it this way: thanks to integrated performance improvements, the average Mac user has much better GPU performance than in the past (well, provided they aren't gaming at retina resolutions). That may seem sad or scary to us, but we live in a very special bubble here at IMG.

That said, despite integrated improvements, specs in games are/will be shooting up because of the new console generation...but by that same token, the longevity of console generations will fix the situation for us, right? It may seem worse now because we are at the beginning of a console generation that will likely last 7-10 years. The iMac of 2024 will be a great gaming machine--unless it's a convertible iPad on a stand, running ARM with no Bootcamp. (That's what my nightmares are like. Oh yeah, paired with this keyboard.)

Completely agree with the iMac rants, BTW. They are bad, but I've always thought this...that's why I built a hackintosh five years ago and never looked back. They are a bit worse than before, but I just don't really see much of an appreciable decline--certainly nothing significant enough to warrant traditionally Mac-friendly devs from bailing (especially for a low spec-friendly company like Blizzard). Yes, options have been taken away--but for all we know it is because they weren't selling. Even the beefier cards made for bad gaming machines. OpenGL has always been behind, graphics have always been weak. Perhaps the move to retina exacerbates the issue, as I agree it's not strictly a gaming problem.

Personally, I'd much rather have a Warcraft III with multiplayer that just works than Overwatch!

That's cool - always think the classics should be kept running on modern operating systems.

With Overwatch the Microsoft exclusive idea does seem a strong possibility, just hope if so that it is time based and not forever - we lost several good games that way and it sure alienates your customers as much as any boost in hardware sales for a platform..

The next Tomb Raider is the same but at least it looks like it will be released elsewhere later so we still have some hope Feral with bring that to OS X later.

So in some positive news, Blizzard is hiring Mac (and PC) programmers to bring Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II to modern systems:

They can't even get Mac engineers to work on their current games, so I'm not sure how positive this news of having positions also unfilled for decades-old titles really is.

mattw, on 04 November 2015 - 02:01 PM, said:

With Overwatch the Microsoft exclusive idea does seem a strong possibility, just hope if so that it is time based and not forever - we lost several good games that way and it sure alienates your customers as much as any boost in hardware sales for a platform..

I would be hugely skeptical of this ever being a thing.

The PC probably doesn't even enter into these sorts of exclusivity deals; the only interest of Microsoft would be to keep the game off the PS4 for as long as possible. It wouldn't have any bearing on Windows or OS X releases.

The PC probably doesn't even enter into these sorts of exclusivity deals; the only interest of Microsoft would be to keep the game off the PS4 for as long as possible. It wouldn't have any bearing on Windows or OS X releases.

It could if they want Overwatch as a poster child for their Xbox/Windows 10 cross play. Since that's completely a Microsoft proprietary thing, any other versions would pretty much be precluded.

"We do what we must, because we can."
"Gaming on a Mac is like women on the internet." — "Highly common and totally awesome?"

His statement leaves room for eventual support (it's actually more promising than the FAQ).

I'm still leaning toward the Metal renderer. Blizzard knows OpenGL is dead in the water on OS X (making it pointless to support in a brand new game), but Metal isn't yet ready for use (their Mac engineering lead implied the drivers are still pretty rough, and they seem to be pushing Apple most to get WoW working first).

Hopefully they'll get it sorted late next year, and it will be a free download for everybody who already bought a PC copy.

Not the best situation, but if it ends up working out this way, I think it's entirely understandable (they can't say right now because they have no idea if or when Metal will be sufficient for what they need).

I don't think it would affect normal porting jobs too much. They only to have to support the game as shipped (and they seem to be doing all right in finding workarounds for missing features that would help porting).

Blizzard games require ongoing support commitments (they have to maintain parity with the Windows version for the lifetime of the product, which for Blizzard games is a hell of a long time). My guess (if this does turn out to be the case) would be that the OpenGL renderer was more or less already done, but they decided not to ship it based on the likelihood that there will never be any future enhancements or fixes (at least nothing major) for OpenGL on OS X (maybe they had technical issues, or maybe they just don't want to release something that they know can't be supported).

It could also be Blizzard attempting to force Apple into adding some feature they need or fixing bugs that are blocking them from shipping (they're probably the only game developer that could actually influence anything Apple does, even if only a little).

I guess we'll see what happens over the next year or two. It definitely hurts seeing that PC|DVD logo by itself on a Blizzard game.